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POEMS BY EDWARD THOMAS 



Books by EDWARD THOMAS 



The Woodland Life ... 
The South Country ... 
The Heart of England 
The Pursuit of Spring 



Blackwood 
Dent 
Dent 
Nelson 



Oxford 

Beautiful Wales 
The Icknield Way 



A. & C. Black 
A. & C. Black 
Methuen 



Celtic Studies 

Norse Tales 

four-and-twenty blackbirds 



Oxford Univ. Press 
Oxford Univ. Press 
Duckworth 



The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans 



Duckworth 



Rose Acre Papers and Hor^ Soli- 

TARiE ... .. Duckworth 

Rest and Unrest ... Duckworth 

Light and Twilight Duckworth 



Richard Jefferies 
Maurice Maeterlinck 
A. C. Swinburne 
Walter J'ater ... 
George Borrow... 
Marlborough 



Hutchinson 
Methuen 
Seeker 
Seeker 

Chapman & Hdll 
Chapman & Hall 



Feminine Influence on the Poets Seeker 



POCKET-BOOKS 

Open Air 
This England 



OF 



EDITED. 

Songs for the 



Grant Richards 
Oxford Univ. Press 




^V^^VviTW'A (^^ CuO 



POEMS 

BY 

EDWARD THOMAS 

(" EDWARD EASTAWAY " ) 



WITH A PORTRAIT 
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH 
BY DUNCAN WILLIAMS 



NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT <St COMPANY 

1917 



TO 



Robert Frost 



CONTEXTS 











page 


The Trumpet ....... 9 


The Sigx-post 








9 


Tears .... 








10 


Two Pewits 








11 


i- The Maxor Farm 








12 


The Owl .... 








12 


Swedes .... 








13 


Will you come ? . 








14 


As THE TEA^kl'S HEAD-BRASS . 








15 


Thaw . . . . 








16 


Interval .... 








16 


Like the touch of raix 








17 


The Path . . . 








iS 


The Combe 








19 


)(. If I SHOULD EVER BY CHANCE 








19 


What shall I give ? . 








20 


If I WERE TO owx 








20 


AxD you, Helen . . ] 


w 






21 


When first .... 








2 2 


Head and Bottle 








23 


After you speak 








24 


Sow^NG ..... 








24 


When we two walked 








25 


In Memori-ani .... 








26 


Fifty Faggots .... 








26 


Women he liked 








26 


Early one morning . 








27 


Cherry Trees .... 








28 











pack 


It rains ........ 28 


The Huxter 




. 




29 


A Gentleman 








29 


The Bridge 








30 


Lob ..... 








• 30 


Bright Clouds . 








35 


The clouds that are so light 








36 


Some eyes condemn . 








36 


May 23 ... . 








■ 37 


The Glory 








39 


Melancholy 








. *40 


Adlestrop . . ... 








. 40 


The Green Roads 








. 41 


The Mill-pond . 








. 42 


It was upon 








43 


Tall Nettles 








• 43 


Haymaking 








44 


How AT once 








45 


Gone, gone again 








46 


The sun used to shine 








47 


October .... 








48 


The long small room 








49 


Liberty .... 








50 


November .... 








51 


The Sheiling 








52 


The Gallows 








53 


Birds' Nests 








54 


Rain . . . . . 








54 


''Home" .... 








55 


There's nothing like the sun 








56 


When he should laugh 








57 


An Old Song . . . 








57 


The Penny Whistle . . . 








59 


Lights Out. 








59 


Cock-crow . • . » , 








61 


Words 


< 






61 



8 



THE TRUMPET 

RISE up, rise up, 
And, as the trumpet blowing 
Chases the dreams of men, 
As the dawn glowing 
The stars that left unlit 
The land and water. 
Rise up and scatter 
The dew that covers 
The print of last night's lovers — 
Scatter it, scatter it I 

While you are listening 

To the clear horn. 

Forget, men, everything 

On this earth newborn. 

Except that it is loveUer 

Than any mysteries. 

Open your eyes to the air 

That has washed the eyes of the stars 

Through all the dew\' night : 

Up with the light, 

Te the old wars ; 

Arise, arise ! 

THE SIGN-POST 

The dim sea glints chill. The white sun is shy. 
And the skeleton weeds and the never-dry. 
Rough, long grasses keep white with frost 
At the hilltop by the finger-post ; 
The smoke of the traveUer's-joy is puffed 
Over hawthorn berr\' and hazel tuft. 

9 



y 



I read the sign. Which way shall I go ? 

A voice says : You would not have doubted so 

At twenty. Another voice gentle with scorn 

Says : At twenty you wished you had never been born. 

One hazel lost a leaf of gold 

From a tuft at the tip, when the first voice told 

The other he wished to know what 'twould be 

To be sixty by this same post. '' You shall see/' 

He laughed — and I had to join his laughter — 

" You shall see ; but either before or after, 

Whatever happens, it must befall, 

A mouthful of earth to remedy all 

Regrets and wishes shall freely be given ; 

And if there be a flaw in that heaven 

Twill be freedom to wish, and your wish may be 

To be here or anywhere talking to me, 

No matter what the weather, on earth, 

At any age between death and birth, — 

To see what day or night can be, 

The sun and the frost, the land and the sea, 

Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring, — 

With a poor man of any sort, down to a king, 

Standing upright out in the air 

Wondering where he shall journey, O where ? '' 

TEARS 

It seems I have no tears left. They should have fallen — 
Their ghosts, if tears have ghosts, did fall — that day 
When twenty hounds streamed by me, not yet combed 

out 
But still all equals in their rage of gladness 

10 



Upon the scent, made one, like a great dragon 

In Blooming Meadow that bends towards the sun 

And once bore hops : and on that other day 

When I stepped out from the double-shadowed Tower 

Into an April morning, stirring and sweet 

And warm. Strange solitude was there and silence. 

A mightier charm than any in the Tower 

Possessed the courtyard. They were changing guard, 

Soldiers in line, young English countrymen. 

Fair-haired and ruddy, in white tunics. Drums 

And fifes were playing *' The British Grenadiers '\ 

The men, the music piercing that solitude 

And silence, told me truths I had not dreamed, 

And have forgotten since their beauty passed. 



TWO PEWITS 

Under the after-sunset sky 
Two pewits sport and cry. 
More white than is the moon on high 
Riding the dark surge silently ; 
More black than earth. Their cry 
Is the one sound under the sky. 
They alone move, now low, now high, 
And merrily they cry 
To the mischievous Spring sky. 
Plunging earthward, tossing high, 
Over the ghost who wonders why 
So merrily they cry and fly, 
Nor choose 'twixt earth and sky, 
While the moon's quarter silently 
Rides, and earth rests as silently. 
II 



THE MANOR FARM 

The rock-like mud unfroze a little and rills 

Ran and sparkled down each side of the road 

Under the catkins wagging in the hedge. 

But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the sun ; 

Nor did I value that thin gilding beam 

More than a pretty February thing 

Till I came down to the old Manor Farm, 

And church and yew-tree opposite, in age 

Its equals and in size. The church and yew 

And farmhouse slept in a Sunday silentness. 

The air raised not a straw. The steep farm roof, 

With tiles duskily glowing, entertained 

The mid-day sun ; and up and down the roof 

White pigeons nestled. There was no sound but one. 

Three cart-horses were looking over a gate 

Drowsily through their forelocks, swishing their tails 

Against a fly, a solitary fly. 

The Winter's cheek flushed as if he had drained 
Spring, Summer, and Autumn at a draught 
And smiled quietly. But 'twas not Winter — 
Rather a season of bliss unchangeable 
Awakened from farm and church where it had lain 
Safe under tile and thatch for ages since 
This England, Old already, was called Merry. 

THE OWL 

Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved ; 
Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof 
Against the North wind ; tired, yet so that rest 
Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof. 

12 



Then'at the inn I had food, fire, and rest. 
Knowing how hungrj', cold, and tired was I. 
All of the night was quite barred out except 
An owl's cry, a most melancholy cry 

Shaken out long and clear upon the hill. 
No merr\' note, nor cause of merriment. 
But one telling me plain what I escaped 
And others could not, that night, as in I went. 

And salted was my food, and my repose. 
Salted and sobered, too, by the bird's voice 
Speaking for all who lay under the stars. 
Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice. 



5\\TDES 

They have taken the gable from the roof of clay 
On the long swede pile. They have let in the sun 
To the white and gold and purple of curled fronds 
Unsunned. It is a sight more tender-gorgeous 
At the wood-comer where Winter moans and drips 
Than when, in the Valley of the Tombs of Kings, 
A boy crawls down into a Pharaoh's tomb 
And, first of Christian men, beholds the mimimy, 
God and monkey, chariot and throne and vase. 
Blue potter}', alabaster, and gold. 

But dreamless long-dead Amen-hotep lies. 
This is a dream of Winter, sweet as Spring. 



13 



WILL YOU COME? 

Will you come ? 

Will you come ? 

Will you ride 

So late 

At my side ? 

O, will you come ? 

Will you come ? 
Will you come 
If the night 
Has a moon, 
Full and bright ? 
0, will you come ? 

Would you come ? 

Would you come 

If the noon 

Gave light, 

Not the moon ? 

Beautiful, would you come ? 

Would you have come ? 

Would you have come 

Without scorning, 

Had it been 

Still morning ? 

Beloved, would you have come ? 

If you come 

Haste and come. 

Owls have cried ; 

It grows dark 

To ride. 

Beloved, beautiful, come. 

14 



AS THE TEA]VrS HEAD-BRASS 

As the team's head-brass flashed out on the turn 
The lovers disappeared into the wood. 
I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm 
That strewed an angle of the fallow, and 
Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square 
Of charlock. Every time the horses turned 
Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned 
Upon the handles to say or ask a word. 
About the weather, next about the war. 
Scraping the share he faced towards the wood, 
And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed 
Once more. 

The blizzard felled the elm whose crest 
I sat in, by a woodpecker's round hole, 
The ploughman said. '' When will they take it away ? '' 
'' When the war's over." So the talk began — 
One minute and an interval of ten, 
A minute more and the same interval. 
" Have you been out ? " " No." " And don't want 

to, perhaps ? " 
'* If I could only come back again, I should. 
I could spare an arm. I shouldn't want to lose 
A leg. If I should lose my head, why, so, 
I should want nothing more. . . . Have many gone 
From here ? " " Yes." " Many lost ? " '' Yes : a 

good few. 
Only two teams work on the farm this year. 
One of my mates is dead. The second day 
In France they killed him. It was back in March, 
The very night of the blizzard, too. Now if 
He had stayed here we should have moved the tree." 

15 



'* And I should not have sat here. Everything 
Would have been different. For it would have been 
Another world.'' *' Ay, and a better, though 
If we could see all all might seem good." Then 
The lovers came out of the wood again : 
The horses started and for the last time 
I watched the clods crumble and topple over 
After the ploughshare and the stumbling team. 



THAW 

Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed 
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed 
And saw from elm-tops, dehcate as flower of grass, 
What we below could not see, Winter pass. 



INTERVAL 

Gone the wild day : 
A wilder night 
Coming makes way 
For brief twilight. 

Where the firm soaked road 
Mounts and is lost 
In the high beech-wood 
It shines almost. 

The beeches keep 
A stormy rest. 
Breathing deep 
Of wind from the west. 
i6 



The wood is blacky 
With a misty steam. 
Above, the cloud pack 
Breaks for one gleam. 

But the woodman's cot 
By the ivied trees 
Awakens not 
To light or breeze. 

It smokes aloft 
Unwavering : 
It hunches soft 
Under storm's wing. 

It has no care 
For gleam or gloom : 
It stays there 
While I shall roam. 

Die, and forget 
The hill of trees. 
The gleam, the wet, 
This roaring peace. 



LIKE THE TOUCH OF RAIN 

Like the touch of rain she was 
On a man's flesh and hair and eyes 
When the joy of walking thus 
Has taken him by surprise : 

17 



With the love of the storm he burns, 
He sings, he laughs, well I know how, 
But forgets when he returns 
As I shall not forget her '' Go now." 

Those two words shut a door 
Between me and the blessed rain 
That was never shut before 
And will not open again. 

THE PATH 

Running along a bank, a parapet 
That saves from the precipitous wood below 
The level road, there is a path. It serves 
Children for looking down the long smooth steep. 
Between the legs of beech and yew, to where 
A fallen tree checks the sight : while men and women 
Content themselves with the road and what they see 
Over the bank, and what the children tell. 
The path, winding like silver, trickles on. 
Bordered and even invaded by thinnest moss 
That tries to cover roots and crumbling chalk 
With gold, olive, and emerald, but in vain. 
The children wear it. They have flattened the bank 
On top, and silvered it between the moss 
With the current of their feet, year after year. 
But the road is houseless, and leads not to school. 
To see a child is rare there, and the eye 
Has but the road, the wood that overhangs 
And underyawns it, and the path that looks 
As if it led on to some legendary 
Or fancied place where men have wished to go 
And stay ; till, sudden, it ends where the wood ends. 

i8 



THE COMBE 

The Combe was ever dark, ancient and dark. 

Its mouth is stopped \^ith bramble, thorn, and briar 

And no one scrambles over the shding chalk 

By beech and yew and perishing juniper 

Down the half precipices of its sides, \\ith roots 

And rabbit holes for steps. The sun of Winter, 

The moon of Summer, and all the singing birds 

Except the missel-thrust that loves jimiper, 

Are quite shut out. But far more ancient and dark 

The Combe looks since they killed the badger there. 

Dug him out and gave him to the hoimds. 

That most ancient Briton of Enghsh beasts. 



IF I SHOULD EVER BY CHANXE 

If I should ever by chance grow rich 

I'll buy Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch, 

Roses, Pyrgo, and Lapwater, 

And let them all to my elder daughter. 

The rent I shaU ask of her will be only 

Each year's first \'iolets, white and lonely, 

The first primroses and orchises — 

She must find them before I do, that is. 

But if she finds a blossom on furze 

Without rent they shall aU for ever be hers, 

Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch, 

Roses, P\Tgo and Lapwater, — 

I shall give them all to my elder daughter. 



IQ 



WHAT SHALL I GIVE? 

What shall I give my daughter the younger 

More than will keep her from cold and hunger ? 

I shall not give her anything. 

If she shared South Weald and Havering, 

Their acres, the two brooks running between, 

Paine's Brook and Weald Brook, 

With pewit, woodpecker, swan, and rook, 

She would be no richer than the queen 

Who once on a time sat in Havering Bower 

Alone, with the shadows, pleasure and power. 

She could do no more with Samarcand, 

Or the mountains of a mountain land 

And its far white house above cottages 

Like Venus above the Pleiades. 

Her small hands I would not cumber 

With so many acres and their lumber. 

But leave her Steep and her own world 

And her spectacled self with hair uncurled. 

Wanting a thousand little things 

That time without contentment brings. 

IF I WERE TO OWN 

If I were to own this countryside 

As far as a man in a day could ride, 

And the Tyes were mine for giving or letting,— 

Wingle Tye and Margaretting 

Tye, — and Skreens, Gooshays, and Cockerells, 

SheUow, Rochetts, Bandish, and Pickerells, 

Martins, Lambkins, and Lillyputs, 

Their copses, ponds, roads, and ruts, 

20 



Fields where plough-horses steam and plovers 

Fling and whimper, hedges that lovers 

Love, and orchards, shrubberies, walls 

Where the sun untroubled by north wind falls, 

And single trees where the thrush sings well 

His proverbs untranslatable, 

I would give them all to my son 

If he would let me any one 

For a song, a blackbird's song, at dawn. 

He should have no more, till on my lawn 

Never a one was left, because I 

Had shot them to put them into a pie, — 

His Essex blackbirds, every one. 

And I was left old and alone. 

Then unless I could pay, for rent, a song 

As sweet as a blackbird's, and as long — 

No more — he should have the house, not I : 

Margaret ting or Wingle Tye, 

Or it might be Skreens, Gooshays, or Cockerells, 

Shellow, Rochetts, Bandish, or Pickerells, 

Martins, Lambkins, or Lillyputs, 

Should be his till the cart tracks had no ruts. 

AND YOU, HELEN 

And you, Helen, what should I give you ? 

So many things I would give you 

Had I an infinite great store 

Offered me and I stood before 

To choose. I would give you youth, 

All kinds of loveliness and truth, 

A clear eye as good as mine, 

Lands, waters, flowers, wine, 

21 



As many children as your heart 

Might wish for, a far better art 

Than mine can be, all you have lost 

Upon the travelling waters tossed. 

Or given to me. If I could choose 

Freely in that great treasure-house 

Anything from any shelf, 

I would give you back yourself, 

And power to discriminate 

What you want and want it not too late, 

Many fair days free from care 

And heart to enjoy both foul and fair. 

And myself, too, if I could find 

Where it lay hidden and it proved kind. 



WHEN FIRST 

When first I came here I had hope, 
Hope for I knew not what. Fast beat 
My heart at sight of the taU slope 
Or grass and yews, as if my feet 

Only by scahng its steps of chalk 
Would see something no other hill 
Ever disclosed. And now I walk 
Down it the last time. Never will 

My heart beat so again at sight 

Of any hill although as fair 

And loftier. For infinite 

The change, late unperceived, this year, 

22 



I 

i 



The twelfth, suddenly, shows me plain. 
Hope now, — not health, nor cheerfulness, 
Since they can come and go again, 
As often one brief hour witnesses, — 

Just hope has gone for ever. Perhaps 
I may love other hills yet more 
Than this : the future and the maps 
Hide something I was waiting for. 

One thing I know, that love with chance 
And use and time and necessity 
Will grow, and louder the heart's dance 
At parting than at meeting be. 



HEAD AND BOTTLE 

The downs will lose the sun, white alyssum 

Lose the bees' hum ; 

But head and bottle tilted back in the cart 

Will never part 

Till I am cold as midnight and all my hours 

Are beeless flowers. 

He neither sees, nor hears, nor smells, nor thinks, 

But only drinks. 

Quiet in the yard where tree trunks do not lie 

More quietly. 



23 



AFTER YOU SPEAK 

After you speak 

And what you meant 

Is plain, 

My eyes 

Meet yours that mean — 

With your cheeks and hair — 

Something more wise, 

More dark, 

And far different. 

Even so the lark 

Loves dust 

And nestles in it 

The minute 

Before he must 

Soar in lone flight 

So far. 

Like a black star 

He seems — 

A mote 

Of singing dust 

Afloat 

Above, 

That dreams 

And sheds no light. 

I know your lust 

Is love. 

SOWING 

It was a perfect day 
For sowing ; just 
As sw^et and dry was the groimd 
As tobacco-dust. 
24 



I tasted deep the hour 
Between the far 
Owl's chuckhng first soft cry 
And the first star. 

A long stretched hour it was ; 
Nothing undone 
Remained ; the earl}' seeds 
All safely sown. 

And now, hark at the rain. 
Windless and lien:, 
Half a kiss, half a lear. 
Saving good-nieht. 



WEES \VE TWO WALKED 

When we two walked in Lent 
We imagined that happiness 
Was something different 
And this was something less. 



But happy were we to hide 
Our happiness, not as they were 
Who acted in their pride 
Juno and Jupiter : 

For the Gods in their jealousy 
Murdered that wife and man. 
And we that were wise five free 
To recall our happiness then. 



^5 



IN MEMORIAM (Easter, 1915) 

The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood 

This Eastertide call into mind the men, 

Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should 

Have gathered them and will do never again. 



FIFTY FAGGOTS 

There they stand, on their ends, the fifty faggots 

That once were underwood of hazel and ash 

In Jenny Pinks's Copse. Now, by the hedge 

Close packed, they make a thicket fancy alone 

Can creep through with the mouse and wren. Next 

Spring 
A blackbird or a robin will nest there. 
Accustomed to them, thinking they will remain 
Whatever is for ever to a bird : 
This Spring it is too late ; the swift has come. 
'Twas a hot day for carrying them up : 
Better they will never warm me, though they must 
Light several Winters' fires. Before they are done 
The war will have ended, many other things 
Have ended, maybe, that I can no more 
Foresee or more control than robin and wren. 



WOMEN HE LIKED 

Women he liked, did shovel-bearded Bob, 
Old Farmer Hayward of the Heath, but he 
Loved horses. He himself was like a cob, 
And leather-coloured. Also he loved a tree. 

26 



For the life in them he loved most living things. 
But a tree chiefly. All along the lane 
He planted elms where now the stormcock sings 
That travellers hear from the slow-climbing train. 

Till then the track had never had a name 

For all its thicket and the nightingales 

That should have earned it. No one was to blame. 

To name a thing beloved man sometimes fails. 

Many years since, Bob Ha^'^vard died, and now 
None passes there because the mist and the rain 
Out of the elms have turned the lane to slough 
And gloom, the name alone surv^ives, Bob's Lane. 

EARLY ONE MORNING 

Early one morning in May I set out, 

And nobody I knew was about. 
Fm boimd away for ever. 
Away somewhere, away for ever. 

There was no wind to trouble the weathercocks. 
I had burnt m\' letters and darned my socks. 

No one knew I was going away, 

I thought myself I should come back some day. 

I heard the brook through the town gardens run. 
sweet was the mud turned to dust by the sun. 

A gate banged in a fence and banged in my head. 
" A fine morning, sir," a shepherd said. 

27 



I could not return from my liberty, 

To my youth and my love and my misery. 

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet, 
The only sweet thing that is not also fleet. 
I'm bound away for ever, 
Away somewhere, away for ever. 

THE CHERRY TREES 

The cherry trees bend over and are shedding 
On the old road where all that passed are dead, 
Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding 
This early May morn when there is none to wed. 

IT RAINS 

It rains, and nothing stirs within the fence 
Anywhere through the orchard's untrodden, dense 
Forest of parsley. The great diamonds 
Of rain on the grassblades there is none to break, 
Or the fallen petals further down to shake. 

And I am nearly as happy as possible 
To search the wilderness in vain though well, 
To think of two walking, kissing there. 
Drenched, yet forgetting the kisses of the rain : 
Sad, too, to think that never, never again, 

Unless alone, so happy shall I walk 
In the rain. When I turn away, on its fine stalk 
Twilight has fined to naught, the parsley flower 
Figures, suspended still and ghostly white. 
The past hovering as it revisits the light. 

28 



i 



THE HUXTER 

He has a hump Kke an ape on his back ; 
He has of money a plentiful lack ; 
And but for a gay coat of double his girth 
There is not a plainer thing on the earth 
This fine May morning. 

But the huxter has a bottle of beer ; 
He drives a cart and his wife sits near 
Who does not heed his lack or his hump ; 
And they laugh as down the lane they bump 
This fine May morning. 

A GENTLEMAN 

'* He has robbed two clubs. The judge at Salisbury 

Can't give him more than he undoubtedly 

Deserves. The scoundrel ! Look at his photograph ! 

A lady-killer ! Hanging's too good by half 

For such as he." So said the stranger, one 

With crimes yet undiscovered or undone. 

But at the inn the Gipsy dame began : 

'' Now he was what I call a gentleman. 

He went along with Carrie, and when she 

Had a baby he paid up so readily 

His half a crown. Just like him. A crown'd have 

been 
More like him. For I never knew him mean. 
Oh ! but he was such a nice gentleman. Oh ! 
Last time we met he said if me and Joe 
Was anywhere near we must be sure and call. 
He put his arms around our Amos all 
As if he were his own son. I pray God 
Save him from justice ! Nicer man never trod." 

29 



4 



THE BRIDGE 

I HAVE come a long way to-day : 

On a strange bridge alone, 

Remembering friends, old friends, 

I rest, without smile or moan. 

As they remember me without smile or moan 

All are behind, the kind 
And the unkind too, no more 
To-night than a dream. The stream 
Runs softly yet drowns the Past, 

The dark-lit stream has drowned the Future and the 
Past. 

No traveller has rest more blest 
Than this moment brief between 
Two lives, when the Night's first hghts 
And shades hide what has never been. 
Things goodlier, lovelier, dearer, than will be or have 
been. 

LOB 

At hawthorn-time in Wiltshire travelling 

In search of something chance would never bring, 

An old man's face, by life and weather cut 

And coloured, — rough, brown, sweet as any nut, — 

A land face, sea-blue-eyed, — hung in my mind 

When I had left him many a mile behind. 

AU he said was : *' Nobody can't stop 'ee. It's 

A footpath, right enough. You see those bits 

Of mounds — that's where they opened up the barrows 

Sixty years since, while I was scaring sparrows. 

30 



They thought as there was something to find there, 
But couldn't find it, by digging, anywhere." 

To turn back then and seek him, where was the use ? 
There were three Manningfords, — Abbots, Bohun, and 

Bruce : 
And whether Alton, not Manningford, it was, 
My memory could not decide, because 
There was both Alton Barnes and Alton Priors. 
All had their churches, graveyards, farms, and byres. 
Lurking to one side up the paths and lanes, 
Seldom well seen except by aeroplanes ; 
And when bells rang, or pigs squealed, or cocks crowed, 
Then only heard. Ages ago the road 
Approached. The people stood and looked and turned, 
Nor asked it to come nearer, nor yet learned 
To move out there and dwell in all men's dust. 
And yet withal they shot the weathercock, just 
Because 'twas he crowed out of tune, they said : 
So now the copper weathercock is dead. 
If they had reaped their dandehons and sold 
Them fairly, they could have afforded gold. 

Many years passed, and I went back again 

Among those villages, and looked for men 

Who might have known my ancient. He himself 

Had long been dead or laid upon the shelf, 

I thought. One man I asked about him roared 

At my description : ** Tis old Bottlesford 

He means. Bill." But another said : '* Of course. 

It was Jack Button up at the White Horse. 

He's dead, sir, these three years." This lasted till 

A girl proposed Walker of Walker's Hill, 

31 



ft 



Old Adam Walker. Adam's Point youll see 
Marked on the maps/' 



'' That was her roguery," 
The next man said. He was a squire's son 
Who loved wild bird and beast, and dog and gun 
For killing them. He had loved them from his birth 
One with another, as he loved the earth. 
" The man may be like Button, or Walker, or 
Like Bottlesford, that you want, but far more 
He sounds like one I saw when I was a child. 
I could almost swear to him. The man was wild 
And wandered. His home was where he was free.. 
Everybody has met one such man as he. 
Does he keep clear old paths that no one uses 
But once a life-time when he loves or muses ? 
He is English as this gate, these flowers, this mire. 
And when at eight years old Lob-lie-by-the-fire 
Came in my books, this was the man I saw. 
He has been in England as long as dove and daw,. 
Calling the wild cherry tree the merry tree. 
The rose campion Bridget-in-her-bravery ; 
And in a tender mood he, as I guess. 
Christened one flower Love-in-idleness, 
And while he walked from Exeter to Leeds 
One April called all cuckoo-flowers Milkmaids. 
From him old herbal Gerard learnt, as a boy, 
To name wild clematis the Traveller's-joy. 
Our blackbirds sang no English till his ear 
Told him they called his Jan Toy ' Pretty dear.' 
(She was Jan Toy the Lucky, who, having lost 
A shilling, and found a penny loaf, rejoiced.) 

32 



For reasons of his own to him the wren 
Is Jenny Footer. Before all other men 
Twas he first called the Hog's Back the Hog's Back. 
That Mother Dunch's Buttocks should not lack 
Their name was his care. He too could explain 
Totteridge and Totterdown and Juggler's Lane : 
He knows, if anyone. Why Tumbhng Bay, 
Inland in Kent, is called so, he might say. 

'' But little he says compared with what he does. 

If ever a sage troubles him he will buzz 

Like a beehive to conclude the tedious fray : 

And the sage, who knows all languages, runs away. 

Yet Lob has thirteen hundred names for a fool. 

And though he never could spare time for school 

To unteach what the fox so well expressed, 

On biting the cock's head off, — Quietness is best, — 

He can talk quite as well as anyone 

After his thinking is forgot and done. 

He first of all told someone else's wife. 

For a farthing she'd skin a flint and spoil a knife 

Worth sixpence skinning it. She heard him speak : 

' She had a face as long as a wet week ' 

Said he, telhng the tale in after years. 

With blue smock and with gold rings in his ears. 

Sometimes he is a pedlar, not too poor 

To keep his wit. This is tall Tom that bore 

The logs in, and with Shakespeare in the hall 

Once talked, when icicles hung by the wall. 

As Heme the Hunter he has known hard times. 

On sleepless nights he made up weather rhymes 

Which others spoilt. And, Hob being then his name. 

He kept the hog that thought the butcher came 

33 3 



To bring his breakfast. * You thought wrong/ said Hob. 

When there were kings in Kent this very Lob, 

Whose sheep grew fat and he himself grew merry. 

Wedded the king's daughter of Canterbury ; 

For he alone, unlike squire, lord, and king. 

Watched a night by her without slumbering ; 

He kept both waking. When he was but a lad 

He won a rich man's heiress, deaf, dumb, and sad, 

By rousing her to laugh at him. He carried 

His donkey on his back. So they were married. 

And while he was a little cobbler's boy 

He tricked the giant coming to destroy 

Shrewsbury by flood. ' And how far is it yet ? ' 

The giant asked in passing. ' I forget ; 

But see these shoes I've worn out on the road 

And we're not there yet.' He emptied out his load 

Of shoes for mending. The giant let fall from his spade 

The earth for damming Severn, and thus made 

The Wrekin hill ; and httle Ercall hill 

Rose where the giant scraped his boots. While still 

So young, our Jack was chief of Gotham's sages. 

But long before he could have been wise, ages 

Earlier than this, while he grew thick and strong 

And ate his bacon, or, at times, sang a song 

And merely smelt it, as Jack the giant-killer 

He made a name. He too ground up the miller, , 

The Yorkshireman who ground men's bones for flour. 

" Do you believe Jack dead before his hour ? 

Or that his name is Walker, or Bottlesford, 

Or Button, a mere clown, or squire, or lord ? 

The man you saw, — Lob-lie-by-the-fire, Jack Cade, « j 

Jack Smith, Jack Moon, poor Jack of every trade, • 

34 l' 



Young Jack, or old Jack, or Jack What-d'ye-call, 
JacK-m-the-hedge, or Robin-run-by-the-wall, 
Robin Hood, Ragged Robin, lazy Bob, 
One of the lords of No Man's Land, good Lob, — 
Although he was seen dying at Waterloo, 
Hastings, Agincourt, and Sedgemoor too, — - 
Lives yet. He never will admit he is dead 
Till millers cease to grind men's bones for bread. 
Not till our weathercock crows once again 
And I remove my house out of the lane 
On to the road." With this he disappeared 
In hazel and thorn tangled with old-man's-beard. 
But one glimpse of his back, as there he stood. 
Choosing his way, proved him of old Jack's blood 
Young Jack perhaps, and now a Wiltshireman 
As he has oft been since his days began. 

BRIGHT CLOUDS 

Bright clouds of may 

Shade half the pond. 

Beyond, 

All but one bay 

Of emerald 

Tall reeds 

Like criss-cross bayonets 

Where a bird once called, 

Lies bright as the sun. 

No one heeds. 

The light wind frets 

And drifts the scum 

Of may-blossom. 

Till the moorhen calls 

Again 

35 3* 



Naught's to be done 
By birds or men. 
Still the may falls. 



THE CLOUDS THAT ARE SO LIGHT 

The clouds that are so light, 
Beautiful, swift and bright, 
Cast shadows on field and park 
Of the earth that is so dark. 

And even so now, light one ! 
Beautiful, swift and bright one ! 
You let fall on a heart that was dark, 
Unillumined, a deeper mark. 

But clouds would have, without earth 
To shadow, far less worth : 
Away from your shadow on me 
Your beauty less would be, 

And if it still be treasured 
An age hence, it shall be measured 
By this small dark spot 
Without which it were not. 



SOME EYES CONDEMN 

Some eyes condemn the earth they gaze upon : 
Some wait patiently till they know far more 
Than earth can tell them : some laugh at the whole 
As folly of another's making : one 

36 



I knew that laughed because he saw, from core 
To rind, not one thing worth the laugh his soul 
Had ready at waking : some ej^es have begun 
With laughing ; some stand startled at the door. 

Others, too, I have seen rest, question, roll, 

Dance, shoot. And many I have loved watching. 

Some 
I could not take my eyes from till they turned 
And loving died. I had not found my goal. 
But thinking of your eyes, dear, I become 
Dumb : for they flamed, and it was me they burned. 



MAY 23 

There never was a finer day, 

And never will be while May is May, — 

The third, and not the last of its kind ; 

But though fair and clear the two behind 

Seemed pursued by tempests overpast ; 

And the morrow with fear that it could not last 

Was spoiled. To-day ere the stones were warm 

Five minutes of thunderstorm 

Dashed it with rain, as if to secure, 

By one tear, its beauty the luck to endure. 

At mid-day then along the lane 

Old Jack Xoman appeared again, 

Jaunty and old, crooked and tall, 

And stopped and grinned at me over the wall, 

With a cowshp bimch in his button-hole 

And one in his cap. Who could say if his roll 

37 



Came from flints in the road, the weather, or ale ? 

He was welcome as the nightingale. 

Not an hour of the sun had been wasted on Jack. 

'* IVe got my Indian complexion back '' 

Said he. He was tanned like a harvester, 

Like his short clay pipe, like the leaf and bur 

That clung to his coat from last night's bed. 

Like the ploughland crumbling red. 

Fairer flowers were none on the earth 

Than his cowslips wet with the dew of their birth. 

Or fresher leaves than the cress in his basket. 

** Where did they come from. Jack ? '' '' Don't ask it, 

And you'll be told no lies." '' Very well : 

Then I can't buy." '' I don't want to sell. 

Take them and these flowers, too, free. 

Perhaps you have something to give me ? 

Wait till next time. The better the day . . . 

The Lord couldn't make a better, I say ; 

If he could, he never has done." 

So off went Jack with his roll-walk-run, 

Leaving his cresses from Oakshott rill 

And his cowslips from Wheatham hill. 

'Twas the first day that the midges bit ; 
But though they bit me, I was glad of it : 
Of the dust in my face, too, I was glad. 
Spring could do nothing to make me sad. 
Bluebells hid all the ruts in the copse. 
The elm seeds lay in the road like hops, 
That fine day. May the twenty-third. 
The day Jack Noman disappeared.^ 



38 



THE GLORY 

The glory of the beauty of the morning, — 
The cuckoo crying over the untouched dew ; 
The blackbird that has found it, and the dove 
That tempts me on to something sweeter than love ; 
White clouds ranged even and fair as new-mown hay ; 
The heat, the stir, the sublime vacancy 
Of sky and meadow and forest and my own heart : — 
The glory invites me, yet it leaves me scorning 
All I can ever do, all I can be, 
Beside the lovely of motion, shape, and hue, 
The happiness I fancy fit to dwell 
[n beauty's presence. Shall I now this day 
Begin to seek as far as heaven, as hell, 
iVisdom or strength to match this beauty, start 
Vnd tread the pale dust pitted with small dark drops, 
in hope to find whatever it is I seek, 
Hearkening to short-lived happy-seeming things 
That we know naught of, in the hazel copse ? 
Or must I be content with discontent 
As larks and swallows are perhaps with wings ? 
And shall I ask at the day's end once more 
What beauty is, and what I can have meant 
By happiness ? And shall I let all go, 
Glad, weary, or both ? Or shall I perhaps know 
That I was happy oft and oft before, 
Awhile forgetting how I am fast pent. 
How dreary-swift, with naught to travel to, 
Is Time ? I cannot bite the day to the core. 



39 



MELANCHOLY 

The rain and wind, the rain and wind, raved endlessly. 
On me the Summer storm, and fever, and melancholy 
Wrought magic, so that if I feared the solitude 
Far more I feared all company : too sharp, too rude, 
Had been the wisest or the dearest human voice. 
What I desired I knew not, but whatever my choice 
Vain it must be, I knew. Yet naught did my despair 
But sweeten the strange sweetness, while through the 

wild air 
All day long I heard a distant cuckoo calling 
And, soft as dulcimers, sounds of near water falling, 
And, softer, and remote as if in history, 
Rumours of what had touched my friends, my foes, 

or me. 

ADLESTROP 

Yes. I remember Adlestrop — 
The name, because one afternoon 
Of heat the express-train drew up there 
Unwontedly. It was late June. 

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. 

No one left and no one came 

On the bare platform. What I saw 

Was Adlestrop — only the name 

And willows, willow-herb, and grass. 
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry. 
No whit less still and lonely fair 
Than the high cloudlets in the sky. 

40 



I 



And for that minute a blackbird sang 
Close by, and round him, mistier. 
Farther and farther, all the birds 
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. 



THE GREEN ROADS 

The green roads that end in the forest 

Are strewn with white goose feathers this June, 

Like marks left behind by some one gone to the forest 
To show his track. But he has never come back. 

Down each green road a cottage looks at the forest. 
Round one the nettle towers ; two are bathed in flowers. 

An old man along the green road to the forest 
Strays from one, from another a child alone. 

In the thicket bordering the forest, 
All day long a thrush twiddles his song. 

It is old, but the trees are young in the forest, 
All but one like a castle keep, in the middle deep. 

That oak saw the ages pass in the forest : 
They were a host, but their memories are lost. 

For the tree is dead : all things forget the forest 
Excepting perhaps me, when now I see 

The old man, the child, the goose feathers at the edge 

of the forest. 
And hear all day long the thrush repeat his song. 

41 



THE MILL-POND 

The sun blazed while the thunder yet 
Added a boom : 
A wagtail flickered bright over 
The mill-pond's gloom : 

Less than the cooing in the alder 
Isles of the pool 

Sounded the thunder through that plunge 
Of waters cool. 



Scared starlings on the aspen tip 

Past the black mill 

Outchattered the stream and the next roar 

Far on the hill. 

As my feet dangling teased the foam 
That slid below 

A girl came out. " Take care ! '' she said- 
Ages ago. 

She startled me, standing quite close 
Dressed all in white : 
Ages ago I was angry till 
She passed from sight. 

Then the storm burst, and as I crouched 
To shelter, how 

Beautiful and kind, too, she seemed, 
As she does now ! 

42 



IT WAS UPON 

It was upon a July evening. 

At a stile I stood, looking along a path 

Over the country by a second Spring 

Drenched perfect green again. *' The lattermath 

Will be a fine one." So the stranger said, 

A wandering man. Albeit I stood at rest. 

Flushed with desire I was. The earth outspread, 

Like meadows of the future, I possessed. 

And as an unaccomplished prophecy 

The stranger's words, after the interval 

Of a score years, when those fields are by me 

Never to be recrossed, now I recall. 

This July eve, and question, wondering, 

What of the lattermath to this hoar Spring ? 



TALL NETTLES 

Tall nettles cover up, as they have done 
These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough 
Long worn out, and the roller made of stone : 
Only the elm butt tops the nettles now. 

This corner of the farmyard I like most : 
As well as any bloom upon a flower 
I Uke the dust on the nettles, never lost 
Except to prove the sweetness of a shower. 



43 



HAYMAKING 

After night's thunder far away had rolled 

The fiery day had a kernel sweet of cold, 

And in the perfect blue the clouds uncurled, 

Like the first gods before they made the world 

And misery, swimming the stormless sea 

In beauty and in divine gaiety. 

The smooth white empty road was lightly strewn 

With leaves — the holly's Autumn falls in June — 

And fir cones standing stiff up in the heat. 

The mill-foot water tumbled white and lit 

With tossing crystals, happier than any crowd 

Of children pouring out of school aloud. 

And in the little thickets where a sleeper 

For ever might lie lost, the nettle-creeper 

And garden warbler sang unceasingly ; 

While over them shrill shrieked in his fierce glee 

The swift with wings and tail as sharp and narrow 

As if the bow had flown off with the arrow. 

Only the scent of woodbine and hay new-m.own 

Travelled the road. In the field sloping down. 

Park-like, to where its willows showed the brook, 

Haymakers rested. The tosser lay forsook 

Out in the sun ; and the long waggon stood 

Without its team, it seemed it never would 

Move from the shadow of that single yew. 

The team, as still, until their task was due, 

Beside the labourers enjoyed the shade 

That three squat oaks mid-field together made 

Upon a circle of grass and weed uncut. 

And on the hollow, once a chalk-pit, but 



44 



Now brimmed with nut and elder-flower so clean. 
The men leaned on their rakes, about to begin, 
But still. And all were silent. All was old, 
This morning time, with a great age untold, 
Older than Clare and Cobbett, Morland and Crome, 
Than, at the field's far edge, the farmer's home, 
A white house crouched at the foot of a great tree. 
Under the heavens that know not what years be 
The men, the beasts, the trees, the implements 
Uttered even what they will in times far hence — 
All of us gone out of the reach of change — 
Immortal in a picture of an old grange. 



HOW AT ONCE 

How at once should I know, 
When stretched in the harvest blue 
I saw the swift's black bow. 
That I would not have that view 
Another day 
Until next May 
Again it is due ? 

The same year after year — 

But with the swift alone. 

With other things I but fear 

That they will be over and done 

Suddenly 

And I only see 

Them to know them gone. 



45 



GONE, GONE AGAIN 

Gone, gone again. 
May, June, July, 
And August gone. 
Again gone by. 

Not memorable 
Save that I saw them go. 
As past the empty quays 
The rivers flow. 



And now again, 
In the harvest rain, 
The Blenheim oranges 
Fall grubby from the trees. 



As when I was young — I, 

And when the lost one was here — '' 

And when the war began 
To turn young men to dung. 



Look at the old house. 
Outmoded, dignified. 
Dark and untenanted. 
With grass growing instead 

Of the footsteps of life. 
The friendliness, the strife ; 
In its beds have lain 
Youth, love, age and pain : 

46 



I am something like that ; 
Only I am not dead. 
Still breathing and interested^ 
In the house that is not dark : — 

I am something like that : 
Not one pane to reflect the sun, 
For the schoolboys to throw at — 
They have broken every one. 



THE SUN USED TO SHINE 

The sun used to shine while we two walked 
Slowly together, paused and started 
Again, and sometimes mused, sometimes talked 
As either pleased, and cheerfully parted 

Each night. We never disagreed 
Which gate to rest on. The to be 
And the late past we gave small heed. 
We turned from men or poetry 

To rumours of the war remote 

Only till both stood disinchned 

For aught but the yellow flavorous coat 

Of an apple wasps had undermined ; 

Or a sentry of dark betonies, 
The statehest of smaU flowers on earth. 
At the forest verge ; or crocuses 
Pale purple as if they had their birth 

47 



In sunless Hades fields. The war 
Came back to mind with the moonrise 
Which soldiers in the east afar 
Beheld then. Nevertheless, our eyes 

Could as well imagine the Crusades 
Or Caesar's battles. Everything 
To faintness Uke those rumours fades — 
Like the brook's water glittering 

Under the moonlight — like those walks 
Now — like us two that took them, and 
The fallen apples, all the talks 
And silences — ^like memory's sand 

When the tide covers it late or soon, 

And other men through other flowers 

In those fields under the same moon j 

Go talking and have easy hours. ¥ 



OCTOBER 

The green elm with the one great bough of gold 

Lets leaves into the grass slip, one by one, — 

The short hill grass, the mushrooms small milk-white, 

Harebell and scabious and tormentil. 

That blackberry and gorse, in dew and sun, 

Bow down to ; and the wind travels too light 

To shake the fallen birch leaves from the fern ; 

The gossamers wander at their own will. 

At heavier steps than birds' the squirrels scold. 

48 



The rich scene has grown fresh again and new 
As Spring and to the touch is not more cool 
Than it is warm to the gaze ; and now I might 
As happy be as earth is beautiful, 
Were I some other or with earth could turn 
In alternation of violet and rose, 
Harebell and snowdrop, at their season due, 
And gorse that has no time not to be gay. 
But if this be not happiness, — who knows ? 
Some day I shall think this a happy day. 
And this mood by the name of melancholy 
Shall no more blackened and obscured be. 



THE LONG SMALL ROOM 

The long small room that showed willows in the west 
Narrowed up to the end the fireplace filled, 
Although not wide. I liked it. No one guessed 
What need or accident made them so build. 

Only the moon, the mouse and the sparrow peeped 
In from the ivy round the casement thick. 
Of all they saw and heard there they shall keep 
The tale for the old ivy and older brick. 

When I look back I am like moon, sparrow and mouse 
That witnessed what they could never understand 
Or alter or prevent in the dark house. 
One thing remains the same — this my right hand 

Crawhng crab-like over the clean white page. 
Resting awhile each morning on the pillow, 
Then once more starting to crawl on towards age. 
The hundred last leaves stream upon the willow. 

49 4 



LIBERTY 

The last light has gone out of the world, except 

This moonlight lying on the grass like frost 

Beyond the brink of the tall elm's shadow. 

It is as if everything else had slept 

Many an age, unforgotten and lost 

The men that were, the things done, long ago, 

All I have thought ; and but the moon andfl 

Live yet and here stand idle over the grave 

Where all is buried. Both have liberty 

To dream what we could do if we were free 

To do some thing we had desired long, 

The moon and I. There's none less free than who 

Does nothing and has nothing else to do, 

Being free only for what is not to his mind. 

And nothing is to his mind. If every hour 

Like this one passing that I have spent among 

The wiser others when I have forgot 

To wonder whether I was free or not, 

Were piled before me, and not lost behind, 

And I could take and carry them away 

I should be rich ; or if I had the power 

To wipe out every one and not again 

Regret, I should be rich to be so poor. 

And yet I still am half in love with pain, 

With what is imperfect, with both tears and mirth, 

With things that have an end, with life^and earth, 

And this moon that leaves me dark within the door. 



50 



NOVEMBER 

November's days are thirty : 

November's earth is dirty, 

Those thirty days, from first to last ; 

And the prettiest things on ground are the paths 

With morning and evening hobnails dinted, 

With foot and wing-tip overprinted 

Or separately charactered, 

Of httle beast and Httle bird. 

The fields are mashed by sheep, the roads 

Make the worst going, the best the woods 

Where dead leaves upward and downward scatter. 

Few care for the mixture of earth and water. 

Twig, leaf, flint, thorn, 

Straw, feather, all that men scorn. 

Pounded up and sodden by flood. 

Condemned as mud. 



But of all the months when earth is greener 

Not one has clean skies that are cleaner. 

Clean and clear and sweet and cold, 

They shine above the earth so old. 

While the after-tempest cloud 

Sails over in silence though winds are loud. 

Till the full moon in the east 

Looks at the planet in the west 

And earth is silent as it is black, 

Yet not unhappy for its lack. 

Up from the dirty earth men stare : 

One imagines a refuge there 

Above the mud, in the pure bright 

Of the cloudless heavenly light : 

51 4* 



Another loves earth and November more dearly 
Because without them, he sees clearly. 
The sky would be nothing more to his eye 
Than he, in any case, is to the sky ; 
He loves even the mud whose dyes 
Renounce all brightness to the skies. 



THE SHEILING 

It stands alone 

Up in a land of stone 

All worn like ancient stairs, 

A land of rocks and trees 

Nourished on wind and stone. 

And all within 

Long delicate has been ; 

By arts and kindliness 

Coloured, sweetened, and warmed 

For many years has been. 

Safe resting there 
Men hear in the travelling air 
But music, pictures see 
In the same daily land 
Painted by the wild air. 



One maker's mind 
Made both, and the house is kind 
To the land that gave it peace, 
And the stone has taken the house 
To its cold heart and is kind. 

52 



THE GALLOWS 

There was a weasel lived in the sun 
With all his family, 
Till a keeper shot him with his gun 
And hung him up on a tree, 
Where he swings in the wind and rain, 
In the sun and in the snow, 
Without pleasure, without pain, 
On the dead oak tree bough. 

There was a crow who was no sleeper. 

But a thief and a murderer 

Till a very late hour ; and this keeper 

Made him one of the things that were, 

To hang and flap in rain and wind, 

In the sun and in the snow. 

There are no more sins to be sinned 

On the dead oak tree bough. 

There was a magpie, too. 

Had a long tongue and a long tail ; 

He could both talk and do — 

But what did that avail ? 

He, too, flaps in the wind and rain 

Alongside weasel and crow. 

Without pleasure, without pain. 

On the dead oak tree bough. 

And many other beasts 
And birds, skin, bone and feather. 
Have been taken from their feasts 
And hung up there together, 



53 



To swing and have endless leisure 
In the sun and in the snow, 
Without pain, without pleasure, 
On the dead oak tree bough. 

BIRDS' NESTS 

The summer nests uncovered by autumn wind. 
Some torn, others dislodged, all dark. 
Everyone sees them : low or high in tree. 
Or hedge, or single bush, they hang like a mark. 

Since there's no need of eyes to see them with 

I cannot help a little shame 

That I missed most, even at eye's level, till 

The leaves blew off and made the seeing no game. 

Tis a light pang. I like to see the nests 

Still in their places, now first known. 

At home and by far roads. Boys knew them not, 

Whatever jays and squirrels may have done. 

And most I like the winter nests deep-hid 

That leaves and berries fell into : 

Once a dormouse dined there on hazel-nuts. 

And grass and goose-grass seeds found soil and grew. 



RAIN 

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain 
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me 
Remembering again that I shall die 
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks 

54 



For washing me cleaner than I have been 
Since I was born into this solitude. 
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon : 
But here I pray that none whom once I loved 
Is dying to-night or lying still awake 
Solitary, listening to the rain, 
Either in pain or thus in sympathy 
Helpless among the living and the dead, 
Like a cold water among broken reeds, 
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff, 
Like me who have no love which this wild rain 
Has not dissolved except the4ove of death. 
If love it be towards what is perfect and 
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint. 

" HOME " 

Fair was the morning, fair our tempers, and 
We had seen nothing fairer than that land. 
Though strange, and the untrodden snow that made 
Wild of the tame, casting out all that was 
Not wild and rustic and old ; and we were glad. 

Fair, too, was afternoon, and first to pass 

Were we that league of snow, next the north wind. 

There was nothing to return for, except need, 
And yet we sang nor ever stopped for speed. 
As we did often with the start behind. 
Faster still strode we when we came in sight 
Of the cold roofs where we must spend the night. 
Happy we had not been there, nor could be. 
Though we had tasted sleep and food and fellowship 
Together long. 

55 



" How quick '' to someone's lip 
The words came, *' will the beaten horse run home/' 

The word " home '' raised a smile in us all three, 

And one repeated it, smiling just so 

That all knew what he meant and none would say. 

Between three counties far apart that lay 

We were divided and looked strangely each 

At the other, and we knew we were not friends 

But fellows in a union that ends 

With the necessity for it, as it ought. 

Never a word was spoken, not a thought 

Was thought, of what the look meant with the word 

" Home '' as we walked and watched the sunset blurred. 

And then to me the word, only the word, 

" Homesick,'' as it were playfully occurred : 

No more. 

If I should ever more admit 
Than the mere word I could not endure it 
For a day longer : this captivity 
Must somehow come to an end, else I should be 
Another man, as often now I seem. 
Or this life be only an evil dream. 



THERE'S NOTHING LIKE THE SUN 

There's nothing like the sun as the year dies. 
Kind as it can be, this world being made so, 
To stones and men and beasts and birds and flies. 
To all things that it touches except snow, 

56 



Whether on mountain side or street of town. 

The south wall warms me : November has begun, 

Yet never shone the sun as fair as now 

While the sweet last-left damsons from the bough 

With spangles of the morning's storm drop down 

Because the starUng shakes it, whistling what 

Once swallows sang. But I have not forgot 

That there is nothing, too, like March's sun. 

Like April's, or July's, or June's, or May's, 

Or January's, or February's, great days : 

And August, September, October, and December 

Have equal days, all different from November. 

No day of any month but I have said — 

Or, if I could live long enough, should say — 

" There's nothing like the sun that shines to-day ". 

There's nothing Uke the sim till we are dead. 

WHEN HE SHOULD LAUGH 

When he should laugh the wise man knows full well 

For he knows what is truly laughable. 

But wiser is the man who laughs also. 

Or holds his laughter, when the fooHsh do. 

AN OLD SONG 

The sun set, the wind fell, the sea 

Was like a mirror shaking : 

The one small wave that clapped the land 

A mile-long snake of foam was making 

Where tide had smoothed and wind had dried 

The vacant sand. 

A Ught divided the swollen clouds 
And lay most perfectly 

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Like a straight narrow footbridge bright 
That crossed over the sea to me ; 
And no one else in the whole world 
Saw that same sight. 

I walked elate, my bridge always 
Just one step from my feet : 
A robin sang, a shade in shade : 
And all I did was to repeat : 
" I'll go no more a-roving 
With you, fair maid/' 

The sailors' song of merry loving 

With dusk and sea-gull's mewing 

Mixed sweet, the lewdness far outweighed 

By the wild charm the chorus played : 

" I'll go no more a-roving 

With you, fair maid : 

A-roving, a-roving, since roving's been my ruin, 

I'll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid." 

In Amsterdam there dwelt a maid — 

Mark well what I do say — 

In Amsterdam there dwelt a maid 

And she was a mistress of her trade : 

ril go no more a-roving 

With you, fair maid : 

A-roving, a-roving, since roving's been my ruin, 

I'll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid. 



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THE PENNY WHISTLE 

The new moon hangs like an ivory bugle 
In the naked frosty blue ; 

And the ghylls of the forest, already blackened 
By Winter, are blackened anew. 

The brooks that cut up and increase the forest. 
As if they had never known 
The sun, are roaring with black hollow voices 
Betwixt rage and a moan. 

But stiU the caravan-hut by the hoUies 

Like a kingfisher gleams between : 

Round the mossed old hearths of the charcoal-burners 

First primroses ask to be seen. 

The charcoal-burners are black, but their hnen 
Blows white on the line ; 
And white the letter the girl is reading 
Under that crescent fine ; 

And her brother who hides apart in a thicket, 
Slowly and surely playing 
On a whistle an olden nursery melody. 
Says far more than I am saying. 

LIGHTS OUT 

I HAVE come to the borders of sleep, 

The unfathomable deep 

Forest where all must lose 

Their way, however straight, 

Or winding, soon or late ; 

They cannot choose. 

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Many a road and track 

That, since the dawn's first crack, 

Up to the forest brink, 

Deceived the travellers 

Suddenly now blurs. 

And in thev sink. 

Here love ends. 
Despair, ambition ends. 
All pleasure and all trouble. 
Although most sweet or bitter, 
Here ends in sleep that is sweeter 
Than tasks most noble. 

There is not any book 

Or face of dearest look 

That I would not turn from now 

To go into the unknown 

I must enter and leave alone 

I know not how. 

The tall forest towers ; 
Its cloudy foliage lowers 
Ahead, shelf above shelf ; 
Its silence I hear and obey 
That I may lose my way 
And myself. 



60 



COCK-CROW 

Out of the wood of thoughts that grows by night 
To be cut down by the sharp axe of light, — 
Out of the night, two cocks together crow. 
Cleaving the darkness with a silver blow : 
And bright before my eyes twin trumpeters stand, 
Heralds of splendour, one at either hand, 
Each facing each as in a coat of arms : 
The milkers lace their boots up at the farms. 

WORDS 

Out of us all 

That make rhymes. 

Will you choose 

Sometimes — 

As the winds use 

A crack in a wall 

Or a drain, 

Their joy or their pain 

To whistle through — 

Choose me. 

You Enghsh words ? 

I know you : 
You are Hght as dreams. 
Tough as oak, 
Precious as gold. 
As poppies and com, 
Or an old cloak : 
Sweet as our birds 
To the ear, 
As the biurnet rose 
6i 



In the heat 

Of Midsummer : 

Strange as the races 

Of dead and unborn : 

Strange and sweet 

Equally, 

And familiar, 

To the eye, 

As the dearest faces 

That a man knows, 

And as lost homes are : 

But though older far 

Than oldest yew, — 

As our hills are, old, — 

Worn new 

Again and again : 

Young as our streams 

After rain : 

And as dear 

As the earth which you prove 

That we love. 



Make me content 

With some sweetness 

From Wales 

Whose nightingales 

Have no wings, — 

From Wiltshire and Kent 

And Herefordshire, 

And the villages there, — 

From the names, and the things 

No less. 



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62 



Let me sometimes dance 

With you, 

Or climb 

Or stand perchance 

In ecstasy, 

Fixed and free 

In a rhyme, 

As poets do. 



THE END 



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PRINTED AT 

T H K C n; V PEL RIYER PRESS, 

KINGSTON, SURREY. 



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